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The world met the Cerda family two years ago when the ABC reality show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" showcased their story -- a generous, but struggling Las Vegas couple raising two daughters with serious immune disorders.

The girls, Molly and Maggie, wore face masks to guard against toxins and germs that might be harmless to healthy kids. The TV program paid to demolish the family's mold-filled house and replace it with an opulent new home that included high-quality air filtration systems, an elevator, solar-heated swimming pool, gourmet kitchen and floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace.

Chuck and Terri Cerda beamed as they viewed the haven, but their joy didn't last long.

They said they couldn't afford the increased cost of operating the larger home. By fall 2009, the house was for sale and the family moved to Oregon, where the parents that television producers found so compelling came under scrutiny.
A website created to benefit the Cerda children features a photo of Molly using a breathing machine. "Our house is a veritable hospital," Terri Cerda said in a video produced for the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
Several doctors and a hospital social worker began to question Terri Cerda's insistence that her daughters had chronic health problems when tests and examinations indicated otherwise. In January, Dr. Thomas Valvano, an OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital pediatrician who specializes in suspected child abuse and neglect, reported the Cerdas to state child-welfare authorities, and in February, the state took temporary custody of the two girls.
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I don't know on this one. Doctors are very quick to label mothers with this condition, especially mothers who are abrasive and obnoxious. CPS workers are not qualified to diagnose them, and have to rely on the doctors and psychologists to do so. The symptoms and behavior of Munchausen's are flexible enough that any parent that asks too many questions could be said to have it, although as I have told a certain social worker at a certain hospital "only a psychiatrist can really diagnose the condition. The last time I checked, an MSW is not the same as an MD".

Yet, if a parent subjects their child to unnecessary medical tests and procedures, they are torturing them in many ways. A child who has had a lot of intrusive medical exams sometimes develops symptoms like a child who has been sexually abused, even when those tests and procedures are medically necessary-the spacing out part, in particular, because it is a coping mechanism.

I don't know on this one. Doctors are very quick to label mothers with this condition, especially mothers who are abrasive and obnoxious. CPS workers are not qualified to diagnose them, and have to rely on the doctors and psychologists to do so. The symptoms and behavior of Munchausen's are flexible enough that any parent that asks too many questions could be said to have it, although as I have told a certain social worker at a certain hospital "only a psychiatrist can really diagnose the condition. The last time I checked, an MSW is not the same as an MD".

Yet, if a parent subjects their child to unnecessary medical tests and procedures, they are torturing them in many ways. A child who has had a lot of intrusive medical exams sometimes develops symptoms like a child who has been sexually abused, even when those tests and procedures are medically necessary-the spacing out part, in particular, because it is a coping mechanism.

It's a bizarre syndrome. Have you ever read Julie Gregory's book? I thought it was an interesting view from the victim's perspective.

I am suggesting the possibility that GotNews.com might be a hoax or troll site making @#$% up. I based that comment on the PJMedia article I linked, whose description and quotes from the killer's FB...